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The Use and Abuse of the Attic Orators1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Stephen Todd
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Extract

How significant are the Attic orators as sources for Athenian history? Their intrinsic importance is certainly very great, greater perhaps than that of any other comparable category of material. On the other hand, they have received surprisingly little direct and systematic attention from ancient historians. This is something of a paradox, and like many paradoxes it is worth examining in some detail: in this case, it has significant implications for the ways in which the orators have been and ought to be studied.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , October 1990 , pp. 159 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1990

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References

Notes

2. This paper is concerned with the orators primarily as historical sources. Their significance as works of literature or as specimens of rhetoric lies outside my brief, except to the extent that historical interpretation requires an understanding of the techniques of persuasion: see below.

3. Ehrenberg, V., The People of Aristophanes: a Sociology of Old Attic Comedy (Oxford, 1951 2), p. 6Google Scholar.

4. See the criticisms made by Dover, K. J. in his review of Ehrenberg, Cambridge Journal (1952)Google Scholar, repr. in Dover, Greece and the Greeks: Collected Papers Vol. I (Oxford, 1987), pp. 279–82. On pp. 279–80 of this review, Dover makes in passing some useful comments on the problems of reading the orators, for which see further Dover, , Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1974), pp. 8–14Google Scholar (orators) and 23–33 (orators and comic poets).

5. Rauchenstein, R., Ausgewählte Reden des Lysias (Berlin, one-vol. ed.1, 1840)Google Scholar; revised by K. Fuhr (two-vol.: I ed.10, 1889; II ed.12, 1899).

6. Frohberger, H., Ausgewählte Reden des Lysias, für den Schülgebrauch (Leipzig: 3 vol. ed.1, 1866–1871; one-vol. editio minor, 1875)Google Scholar; vol. 1 revised by G. Gebauer (I ed.2, 1880); 3 vols. in 2 revised by Th. Thalheim (I ed.3, 1895; II ed.2, 1892).

7. Xenophon's Hellenika covers the period 411–362 B.C., but only for the revolution of the Thirty in 404/3 does it give a detailed extended account of Athenian internal politics.

8. See, e.g., Rauchenstein, R., ‘Über das Ende der Dreissig in Athen, und einige damit zusammenhängende Fragen’, Philologus 10 (1855), 591–607CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the process of conflation was made considerably less uncomfortable because of the obvious gaps in Xenophon's account.

9. Grosser, R., ‘Über die Unechtheit der xenophontischen Hellenika’, Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie und Pädagogik 12 (1866), 721–32Google Scholar.

10 Hecker, A., De oratione in Eratosthenem triagintavirum Lysiae falso tributa (Leiden, 1848)Google Scholar.

11. Stedenfeldt, H., De Lysandri Plutarchei fontibus (Bonn, 1867)Google Scholar; Stedenfeldt later expanded his arguments in an article directed specifically at the relevant speeches of Lysias, , ‘Über das Tendenz des Lysias in den Reden gegen Eratosthenes <XII> und Agoratus <XIII>’, Philologus 29 (1870), 219–44Google Scholar.

12. And in England specifically, not just appreciation but the ability to reproduce ‘good style’ in the form of prose composition.

13. Schön, K., Die Scheinargumente des Lysias, insbesondere in der xii. … und in der xxiv. Rede (Paderborn, 1918), pp. 5–12Google Scholar, gives a detailed and useful critique of the views of his predecessors (Stedenfeldt included) on Lysias' factual reliability.

14. Spengel, L., Sunagôgê Tekhnôn (Stuttgart, 1818)Google Scholar.

15. Wyse, W., The Speeches of Isaeus, with critical and explanatory notes (Cambridge, 1904; repr. Hildesheim 1967)Google Scholar.

16. Stutzer, E., ‘Drei epitomierte Reden des Lysias’, Hermes 14 (1879), 499–566Google Scholar, argued that the difficulties of speeches VIII, IX, and XX could all be explained by assuming that in each case the speech was an epitome; Schultze, P., De Lysiae oratione trigesima (Berlin, 1883)Google Scholar applied the same technique to speech XXX.

17. Blass, F., Die attische Beredsamkeit (Leipzig, 3 vols., ed.1, 1868–1877)Google Scholar. Lysias is discussed in vol. I (ed.1, 1868; ed.2, 1887).

18. See, e.g., von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, U., Aristoteles und Athen (Berlin, 1893)Google Scholar; Ed. Meyer, , Geschichte des Altertums (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1902 and many subsequent editions)Google Scholar; Drerup, E., Aus einer alien Advokatenrepublik: Demosthenes und seiner Zeit (Paderborn, 1916)Google Scholar; Schön, Scheinargumente. For Drerup as Schön's teacher, see Schön, p. 12.

19. Shuckburgh, E. S., Lysiae Orationes XVI. With analysis, notes, appendices and commentary (London: ed.1, 1882; ed.2, 1892)Google Scholar; the quotation is from p. vii of the 1892 edition.

20. Shuckburgh, , Lysias, preface to ed.1: p. xvi of the 1892 editionGoogle Scholar.

21. Ferckel, F., Lysias und Athen: des Redners politische Stellung zum Gaststaat (Würzburg Triltsch, 1937), pp. 160 and 163Google Scholar.

22. MacDowell, D. M., Andokides, On the Mysteries: the Text edited with Introduction, Commentary and Appendices (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar.

23. Edwards, M. and Usher, S., Attic Orators I: Antiphon and Lysias (Warminster, 1985)Google Scholar; Carey, C. and Reid, R. A., Demosthenes: Selected Private Speeches (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar. Forthcoming: Reid on Hypereides and Lykourgos, and Usher on Isokrates for Aris and Phillips; and Carey on Lysias for Cambridge.

24. A particularly striking recent example is Jameson, M. H., ‘Agriculture and slavery in classical Athens’, CJ 73 (1977), 122–45, at p. 125Google Scholar.

25. An Athenian litigant had normally to deliver his own speech, but he did not necessarily have to write it. A logographic speech is one in which the professional orator is not himself the speaker: for the relationship between the orator and his client, see Dover, K. J., Lysias and the Corpus Lysiacum (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968)Google Scholar, some aspects of which are discussed below.

26. Of course a logographic speech may at times have been ‘published’ by the litigant rather than (or as well as) by the orator. This possibility is considered by Dover, , Lysias, pp. 159–60Google Scholar.

27. For the contrast between the numbers of speeches known in Antiquity and those which survived into and through the Middle Ages, see the figures for the former given by [Plutarch], Lives of the Ten Orators. He speaks, for instance, of 425 extant speeches attributed or misattributed to Lysias ([Plutarch] 836a): of these, we know the titles of less than 200; and only some 30 survive fully or nearly complete.

28. It is because the speeches were preserved at this stage primarily for stylistic reasons that we so rarely have any external evidence about the result or the context or the identity of the parties.

29. Paul Millett suggests to me that part of the explanation may be the nineteenth-century penchant for ‘great man’ theories of history: to interpret the past in these terms, it is important to know whose words you are reading.

30. Dover, , Lysias, esp. pp. 148–72Google Scholar.

31. The comments of two reviewers are strikingly similar: Kennedy, G. (AJPh 91 [1970], 495–7)Google Scholar described Dover's thesis as ‘very probable’, but voiced ‘certain objections’ (p. 497); Arnott, W. G. (CR 21 [1971], 359–61)Google Scholar said that it was ‘novel, brilliant and plausible’, but noted ‘two weaknesses in the theory’ (p. 361). MacDowell, D. M., reviewing one of Dover's later books (Aristophanic Comedy [London, 1972])Google Scholar in CR 24 (1974), 27–29 is still less happyGoogle Scholar; he praises the massive range of Dover's output in the period 1968–72, but complains of the ‘occasionally … bizarre result’: Lysias for instance ‘after a devastatingly logical start leads in the end to speculative conclusions which seem unlikely to win general acceptance’. For the comments of Usher, see n. 32 below.

32. Usher, S., review of Dover's Lysias in JHS 91 (1971), 147–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Usher, , ‘Lysias and his clients’, GRBS 17 (1976), 31–40Google Scholar.

33. Compare Dover's, earlier paper, ‘The chronology of Antiphon's speeches’, CQ 44 (1950), 44–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. in Dover, The Greeks and their Legacy: Collected Papers Vol. II (Oxford, 19891), pp. 13–35.

34. Usher, S. and Najock, D., ‘A statistical study of authorship in the Corpus Lysiacum,’ Computers and the Humanities 16 (1982), 85–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. See for example Dover, , Lysias, pp. 166–7Google Scholar, though I am not convinced by Dover's suggestion that Lys. XV is similarly a rhetorical exercise based on Lys. XIV.

36. The argument is well summarized by Dover, , Lysias, pp. 172–4Google Scholar.

37. Gernet, L., ‘Sur le discours pour Euphiletos attribué à Isée’, in Mélanges Desrousseaux (Paris, 1937), 171–80Google Scholar, argued that the rules about arbitration presupposed in Isaios XII are so extraordinary that they cannot be true; but the counter-arguments of Just, M., ‘Le rôle des diaitétaidans Isée 12.11’, RIDA 15 (1968), 107–16Google Scholar, are accepted by (e.g.) Humphreys, S. C., ‘Kinship patterns in the Athenian courts’, GRBS 27 (1986), p. 59 n. 5Google Scholar.

38. Finley, M. I., Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens, 500–200 B.C.: the horosinscriptions (New Brunswick, 1952; repr. with new introd. by P. C. Millett, 1985), p. 30 n. 10Google Scholar, insists that the statement about misthôsis oikouin §29 is a misunderstanding of Athenian law based on a misreading of XXVII. 58. See, however, MacDowell, ‘The authenticity of Dem. XXIX as a source of information about Athenian law’ (Symposion 1985, in press).

39. On the special circumstances surrounding Dem. XXV, see Hansen, M. H., Apagôgê, Endeixis and Ephêgêsis: a Study in the Athenian Administration of Justice in the Fourth Century B.C. (Odense, 1976), pp. 144–52Google Scholar.

40. Gernet, L. in Gernet and Bizos, M., Lysias: Discours (Budé, ed.: Paris, 1955 3), i. 92Google Scholar.

41. This is the principal argument of Roussel, L., L'Invalide de Pseudo-Lysias (Paris, 1966)Google Scholar.

42. Dover, , Lysias, pp. 168–70Google Scholar.

43. Lämmli, F., Das attische Prozessverfahren in seiner Wirkung auf die Gerichtsrede (Paderborn, 1938), pp. 17–57Google Scholar.

44. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, U., ‘Lesefrüchte 171’, Hermes 58 (1923), 57–61Google Scholar excised a substantial part of Lys. I (§§37–46) on the grounds that it presupposed knowledge of the prosecution's tactics which Lysias cannot have had before the trial: see however Dover, , Lysias, p. 148 n. 1Google Scholar.

45. Fuks, A., Social Conflict in Ancient Greece (Jerusalem and Leiden, 1984)Google Scholar.

46. Croix, G. E. M. de Ste., The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972), p. 360Google Scholar; Davies, J. K., Democracy and Classical Greece (London, 1978), p. 114Google Scholar.

47. See the comments of Davies, J. K., Athenian Propertied Families, 600–300 B.C. (Oxford, 1971), pp. 592–3Google Scholar.

48. This presumably is the point of the jibe made by Apollodoros' opponent, the defendant Polykles: ‘the mouse has tasted pitch <proverbial for biting off more than one could chew>: he was the one who wanted to be an Athenian’ (Dem. L. 26).

49. Isager, S. and Hansen, M. H., Aspects of Athenian Society in the Fourth Century B.C.: a Historical Introduction to and Commentary on the Paragraphê-speeches and the Speech Against Dionysiodoros in the Corpus Demosthenicum (originally in Danish; Eng. transl.: Odense, 1975)Google Scholar.

50. Harrison, A. R. W., The Law of Athens (two vols., Oxford 1968–1971), i. 122 n. 1Google Scholar.

51. See, e.g., Gernet, , Budé, Lysias, i. 191Google Scholar, and Paoli, U. E., Studi sul Processo attico (Padua, 1933), p. 125Google Scholar.

52. The bibliography on this subject is vast. Perlman, S. F. listed 13 items specifically on the Peace in the ‘select bibliography’ of his Philip and Athens (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar. Since then it has been the subject of a series of specialist articles: see most recently Ellis, J. R., ‘Philip and the Peace of Philokrates’, in Adams, W. L. and Borza, E. N. (eds.), Philip II, Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Heritage (Washington, D.C., 1982), pp. 43–59Google Scholar, with references to earlier work. There have also been a number of general works on Philip, each of which devotes at least some space to the question: for references, see Errington, R. M., ‘Review discussion: four interpretations of Philip II’, AJAH 6 (1981), 69–88Google Scholar.

53. Harvey, F. D., ‘Dona ferentes: some aspects of bribery in Greek polities’, in Cartledge, P. A. and Harvey, F. D. (eds.), Crux: Essays Presented to G. E. M. de Ste. Croix on his 75th Birthday (Exeter and London, 1985), pp. 76–117Google Scholar.

54. Finley, M. I., The Ancient Economy (London, 1985 2), p. 116Google Scholar.